Brian Freemantle - The Inscrutable Charlie Muffin

The aircraft doors thumped closed and the No Smoking and seatbelts signs flicked on. There was nothing he could do. Not a bloody thing.

‘My Ministry have taken a very unusual decision in admitting you,’ said Chiu. ‘We hope it will work out satisfactorily.’

‘So do I,’ said Charlie sincerely. In so many ways, he thought. He’d certainly need the hotel bar. But not for a celebration.

Harvey Jones leaned against the rail of the ferry taking him from Hong Kong to Kowloon, gazing down into the churned waters of the harbour. Far away the Pride of America looked like one of those beached whales that sometimes came ashore along the Miami coastline, driven to suicide by sea parasites infecting their skins. His parents had sent him pictures in their last letter from Fort Lauderdale, the one in which they’d assured him of how happily they were settling down into retirement.

Pity he couldn’t send them a postcard. Be bad security, he knew. Perhaps he’d visit them, when he got back. He might even have something about which to boast. Then again, he might not.

Jones drove his fist in tiny, impatient movements against the rail. Why, he wondered, were the damned Chinese being so helpful to the bloody man? And they were being helpful. Openly so. He hadn’t even had to make it obvious that he’d followed the man to the legation offices. Kuo had freely admitted it. Almost volunteered it.

‘… special chance… to prove yourself… ’

He was being beaten, decided Jones. By a tied-in-the-middle-with-string hayseed of an agent who should have been put out to pasture long ago. And he was an agent, no matter how closely he tried to hide behind the insurance investigator crap. Jones was sure of it.

The American stared up, irritated by another realisation. To ask Washington to pressure London for co-operation now would be an open admission of failure. Best to wait. At least until the man came back. It would be easy to gauge whether the visit had been worth while. That was it. Just wait and trick the bastard into some sort of confession. Then put the arm on him.

The ferry nudged against the dock and Jones got into line to disembark.

Still failure, though. Whether he did it now or later.

It wasn’t going as he had hoped, he admitted to himself reluctantly. In fact, it was turning out to be a complete fuck-up.

Jones had cleared the quayside by the time Jenny Lin Lee finally left the same ferry. For a moment she stared across towards Hong Kong island, then started towards Kowloon.

Already they would know she had arrived. Been warned to expect her, in fact. Just as the hotels and then the bars in the Wan Chai had been warned to refuse her, forcing her lower and lower.

She turned right, along the Salisbury Road and in front of the Peninsula Hotel which Jones had just entered and on towards the harbour slums.

That’s where the Mao Tai shacks and the short-time houses were. All she could expect now. Or would be allowed. No Europeans, of course. Or even clean Chinese. Just the blank-eyed, diseased men of the fishing junks and the shipyards.

She could avoid the pain, she knew, feeling for the assurance of the hypodermic in her shoulder bag. There would be no difficulty in obtaining it, not until she’d really established a dependence. Then it might be difficult. Impossible, eventually. But that hadn’t happened yet. Weeks away. And she had to take away the feeling.

Fan Yung-ching, the former prison cook, was a wizened, dried-out old man, tissue-paper skin stretched over the bones of his face and hands, making him almost doll-like. A very ugly doll, thought Charlie.

The man crouched rather than sat on the other side of the interview bench, skeletal hands across his stomach as if he were in physical pain. Which he probably was. Fear leaked from him, souring the room with his smell. Soon, decided Charlie, the man would wet himself. Charlie had been in many rooms, confronting many men as frightened as this. Always, at some stage, their bladders went. He hoped that was the only collapse. Often it wasn’t.

It was a small, box-shaped chamber, crowded because of the number of people who had to be present.

The interpreter who would translate Charlie’s questions was immediately to his left, arms upon the table, waiting with a notepad before him. Behind, at a narrow bench, sat Chiu Ching-mao. With him was the official from the legal section of the British embassy.

Geoffrey Hodgson, the man had introduced himself. Typical diplomat-lawyer posted because of an ability with languages.

Charlie looked at the lawyer and Hodgson smiled hopefully, just as he’d smiled when he confirmed in unwitting conversation the ambassador’s former posting to Prague.

‘Expects you at the embassy after the interview,’ Hodgson had said.

No escape then.

It would have been four years, Charlie calculated. And not more than three hours together. The man would have encountered thousands of people in that time. And would not know the outcome of Charlie’s visit to Czechoslovakia anyway, because of the embarrassment to the department.

Scarce reason to remember him. Wrong to panic then. Pointless anyway. At least he knew in advance. It gave him a slight advantage: too slight.

Charlie continued his examination of the room. At a third table sat two bilingual notetakers, tape-recording machines between them.

As efficiently organised as everything else, decided Charlie.

‘Shall we start?’ he said.

‘There should be an oath, if the man has a religion,’ warned Hodgson.

Fan shook his head to the interpreter’s question.

‘An affirmation, at least,’ insisted Hodgson. It was an unusual situation and he didn’t want any mistakes.

‘He understands,’ said the interpreter.

The man paused as one of the notetakers made an adjustment to the recorder, then quoted the undertaking to the old man. Haltingly, eyes locked on to the table in front of him, Fan repeated his promise that the statement would be the truth. He was wiping one hand over the other in tiny washing movements. He was too frightened to lie, Charlie knew.

The affirmation over, Fan hurriedly talked on, bobbing his hand in fawning, pleading motions.

‘He begs forgiveness,’ said the interpreter. ‘He says he was forced to do what he did… that he did not know it was a poison he was introducing into the men’s food. He was told that it was a substance merely to make them ill, to cause a delay to the trial…’

It was going to be more disjointed than he had expected, realised Charlie. He turned to Hodgson.

‘Would there be any difficulty about admissibility if the transcript is shown to be a series of questions and answers?’

The British lawyer pursed his lips doubtfully.

‘Shouldn’t be,’ he said, ‘providing that it couldn’t be argued that the questions were too leading. You must not suggest the answers you want.’

Charlie turned back to the cook.

‘Does he know the man who gave him the substance?’

‘The same man who threatened me,’ replied Fan, through the interpreter.

‘What is his name?’

‘Johnny Lu.’

Charlie reached into his briefcase, bringing out one of the many photographs of the millionaire’s son it had been automatic for him to bring. It had been taken at the press conference just after the liner sailed from New York and showed the man next to his father.

‘This man?’ he asked.

Fan squinted at the picture.

‘Yes,’ he said finally.

Charlie looked towards the recorders.

‘Can the transcript show he has identified a picture of John Lu taken aboard the Pride of America,’ he requested formally.

The proof, Charlie thought. The proof that Johnson had demanded. And which would save Willoughby. What, he wondered, would save him?